As a programmer and person in high tech, I'm in awe of the Iron Dome. The speed with which it has to make decisions, and with which it does so, and the number of rockets that it has knocked out the sky, demonstrate what an amazing piece of technology this is. I've been programming for a long time, but still can't begin to imagine the complexity of the calculations that these systems are doing, and how well they've managed to pull it off.
As an Israeli citizen whose home is in the range of the Hamas rockets, it's hugely comforting to know that this technology has been deployed. I'll be teaching a Python class in Tel Aviv tomorrow, and while I can basically expect that Hamas will be sending a bunch of rockets aiming to kill me (or anyone else they can), I'm happy to know that our interruptions will likely be annoying and frustrating, rather than lethal.
As an Israeli citizen who doesn't want to see our foot soldiers in Gaza (for a very large number of reasons), I'm also happy that Iron Dome gives our government time before sending them in.
The situation with Gaza, and with the Palestinians, is a pretty bad one, although I remain optimistic over the long term. For now, though, anything that reduces the threat of rockets that Hamas is sending at us strikes me as a good thing.
Perhaps you should re-watch the Star Trek episode A Taste of Armageddon wherein a country engages in a sanitized war and the effect that has on their ability to find real, sustainable, long-term solutions.
An interesting point, even if that episode depicts something quite different from our current situation. I don't think that HN is quite the place for such a discussion; I'd be happy to take it offline, and explain my viewpoint as well as hear yours.
Believe me, I have a huge amount of criticism for the current Israeli government. I voted for opposition parties. I disagree with a large number of their policies, most of which have nothing to do with the Palestinians.
But I have nothing but praise for a government policy that results in fewer civilian deaths. Those might have long-range, unexpected effects, but less death is a good thing, I'd like to think.
Indeed, I would encourage all governments -- including that of Hamas in Gaza, which isn't exactly an enlightened democracy -- to spend time and money on ways to protect their people, and avoid death, injury, and destruction.
Given that Hamas has a stated policy of killing as many Israeli civilians as they possibly can, and that they have worked to achieve that goal to the greatest possible degree, I can only express delight and gratitude that Iron Dome exists, and that it is effective.
The software design is particularly interesting. I recommend this article:
"Typical command-and-control software for military gear is highly customized and hard to modify. The key to MPrest’s success, Barak says, is that the command-and-control software is simple and modular, so customers can quickly adapt it without reprogramming. The Israeli army was able to recalibrate Iron Dome batteries almost immediately, without a software rewrite, when Hamas fighters began to fire longer-range missiles.[1]"
From the article: "Microsoft’s Windows and .NET architecture make up the base layer of the system .. The same basic technology is being used for civilian purposes, including for a vehicle fleet management system"
This raises two questions:
1. What is the commonality between missile defense and fleet management ?
2. How does a system that is most likely real-time run on windows/.net ?
I would imagine that .Net is used on the control and targetting systems on the launcher I can't imagine they are running a .Net implementation on the actual missiles computer.
Wow, what an unbalanced article! No mention of casualties on the other side. Disgusting one-sided coverage. I am really disappointed in the Washington Post. Bad job. I find that Israeli news sources like Haaretz are more balanced re: the middle east than the US news is - strange. Al Jazeera is another reasonable source for middle east news. Forget about US news coverage of the middle east.
As an American, I find I often feel the need to use something like news.google.com to find articles on any given story from many countries around the world to get a more balanced view. This is a practice that I have introduced to several friends and family members, and once they make the little bit of effort to look at world wide coverage they understand my complaint about the US news industry.
In our modern world, I think that it is at least ill-advised, if not dangerous, to live in a bubble and not read many opposing opinions on important events.
So I agree one sided articles are generally very bad in regard to difficult situations like this. But in my opinion that is because they try to illicit sympathy for that particular side. However, in this case.. the post seemed to be about a new cool technology.
Perhaps it was just me but at the end of this article I felt drawn to neither side. The only thoughts I had on the matter were, "Man that is cool. Its too bad people have to be in harms way for such technology to get funding, but thanks for pioneering the simplest versions of the tech we need to stop asteroids".
A good test to see what the article is about is to remove the actors and states then re-read. After doing that, your analysis of the article being mostly about a cool new technology (or neat use of existing, either or) is pretty much spot on.
>However, in this case.. the post seemed to be about a new cool technology.
So the article is little more than a straw man to divert from the real atrocities being committed by the Israelis' in Gaza today. And that is entirely the point of the OP - that this article is little more than a technocratic diversion to feed the fetish of a homogenous target group, rather than real reporting on the issue.
The front page of the WSJ is covered with stories about the situation is Gaza, including the most prominent that has the number of deaths in the first phrase. Is it really fair to accuse them of diversion based on a single story?
Depends if Washington or London were facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions on account of repressive blockades from a neighbor. I'm quite sure Washington or London would be sending missiles towards any country promoting invasion, destruction of hospitals, repression of the general population ..
My general impression before reading the article is the Iron Dome, while technically impressive, wouldn't help ease the systemic problems, because if rockets become ineffective enough, other means of enacting violence/getting the point across will be used.
Meanwhile, aggressive action gets cheaper for Israel from a human casualty perspective if they don't have to worry about further pissing people off who have rockets. Cynically speaking, lowering the cost of something makes it more likely to happen :(
If, however, Iron Dome gets to a point where Israel feels safe enough to delay/attenuate/cancel a ground invasion as a mitigating/retaliatory tactic, one possibility the article mentioned, then it could be a net benefit. Does require self-control, though. And I don't know how safe people will feel if rockets are being fired in their general direction, even if you get very good at shooting them down; I doubt it is something you get complacent about.
If you look at what the organisation that is Hamas does to it's own people, I really question any one-sidedness. Plus, let's face facts here : it's a war. Hamas has declared it's intent to hunt down every Jew on the face of the planet (and atheist, incidentally), and they do stuff like this :
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using violence against these people. There I've said it. Are the Israeli's innocent ? No. But that doesn't mean they are morally on the same level as the Palestinians.
I agree that you should read many different news sources, but keep in mind who owns Al Jazeera just as much as you'd take who owns the BBC into account.
"“The Iron Dome system and its impressive success thus far have had a strategic impact on managing the campaign. It gives us wide options,” said Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. “Having said that, we cannot become complacent.”"
Reminds me of when I first read many years about the potential paradox of using a firewall and security - that it also meant you couldn't ignore individual security settings (turning off ports and services) on machines behind the firewall assuming that the first line of defense was sufficient.
How is that a paradox?[1] I fail to see the contradiction in putting up a defense and yet remaining cautious. Did you instead mean that it is ironic? I don't find it ironic or paradoxical, but I think irony is closer to the word you're looking for.
Taking one precaution and yet remaining cautious is rather common. We wear seat belts, yet drive carefully. We practice good hygiene, and yet get vaccinations, etc.
You put up a firewall to make you secure. So you should be secure. But by putting up a firewall you fail to secure something else or you are lax in another area of security. Because you think "it's been take care of. So I see it as a paradox. Although it could be ironic if someone put up a firewall but then was hacked because of something they didn't do thinking they didn't need it if they had a firewall. That would be an irony.
The "Iron Dome" will not change the current situation in a way that, say, political negotiation will. It's really frustrating to watch the same process play itself out. Throw a few more bombs in, stir the ashes (so to say) and repeat in 2 years. Is the ongoing plan to degrade the operational capacity of Hamas _just so_ that they cannot seriously threaten? Does the Iron Dome entail perpetual open warfare?
It's clear that Israel is doubling down on automation and military technology so that the war can grind on from an increasingly safe distance. They have the tiger by the tail and they cannot let go! So, lock it in the closet, behind domes and fences, etc.
I would hate being stuck in Gaza right now. Can you imagine? What a shit-show. There is no "dome" there, naturally. The bombs come flying in with ease. And it seems like 50/50 that there will be a ground invasion. Supposedly Egypt has the tunnels to Gaza sealed. Maybe Israel thinks this is the time to completely smash Hamas. All this is something to think about while you sit in a basement, for days.
I think the Iron Dome is helping to effectively neutralize Hamas and reduce the number of weapons Hamas has, which may help defuse the situation, making it perhaps more possible that Hamas/Fatah coalition will see their best option is in a negotiated solution.
That said, I really hope they don't launch a ground invasion - thanks to the Iron Dome it is even more asymmetrical/unnecessary than it usually is and would only serve to push Hamas back towards more radical tactics, like suicide bombings, and other more radical groups will form in Hamas' wake if Hamas is destroyed.
Hopefully cooler heads prevail. But we're talking about Bibi here.
The overall long term lesson of the events of the 20th and early 21st centuries is that economic development is worth at least several times the same effort put into weapons. (Israel as an organization obviously understands this.)
The "opposition" which is most effective results in the growth of knowledge and economic power. Knowledge and economic power can buy weapons and create game-changing technologies. The human race is still vile, primitive, and tribal, but we are slowly waking up from history. We've gotten to the point where a great many of us have figured out that war and violence have no glory and are just a really bad idea.
Worry less about borders and what it takes to have them and put effort into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
Gaza has no "dome" there, naturally, because if it did (with the big-oil money of their ideological brethren easily to pay) then Hamas could not play the victim card in the global press by counting up the civilians Hamas explicitly puts at risk of cross-fire even when Israel provides humane advance warning. Also given what operates as taqiyya tactics among the ideological brethren on display for the rest of the world, Israel would be unwise to trust that Eqypt had actually sealed any Hamas tunnels that could hurt Israel. Mossad hopefully is smarter than to believe what may be just a pack of Eqypt/Hamas lies in what is actually a monolithic ideology of terror and conquest. (Because, like, well, duh, uh, in a digital age Hamas didn't get the smoke signals from Eqypt a few days ago proposing truce that Israel was wiling to accept.) IDF may be on the ground to find out and fix the tunnel situation if necessary.
It is not an israeli plan. Basically hamas have chosen the wrong side in the syrian conflict, so it lost the support of iran and syria(and maybe saudi-arabia). He also lost the support of egypt due to the regime change. And he is in bad relations with fatah on the west bank.
All this put the hamas with very little political and monetary support and with inability to pay operatives. They are near collapse.
So how do hamas wants to get the support of the people of gaza? By creating a common enemy.
So they shoot missiles at israel, israel has no choice but to respond, political support of hamas increases and the cycle continues.
This is pretty close to my summation to my gf the other evening
"Every few years Hamas launches rockets at Israel, Israel then uses the opportunity to smash the crap out of Hamas for a few days while "international concern" grows, at a certain point Israel stops the attacks, the international community claims a victory and Hamas gets a bloody nose, nothing changes and it all happens again in 2-3 years"
I suspect sometimes I'm too cynical..then I read the news.
Is Hamas even a target anymore? In 4 days Operation Protective Edge took the life of 114 people, 88 of which were non combatant civilians [1]. They even managed to destroy a centre for disabled people. [2] That's a quite a big margin of error for one of the most advanced armies on the planet.
What people never mention is that they only target the sites that rockets get launched from. It's a cheap propaganda win for Hamas to launch rockets from football stadiums and hospitals.
There is an issue of impartiality on your sources (at least the Guardian), it's one of the better newspapers but is still pretty biased towards Palestinians.
Hamas weapons are and have always been the target.
They store these weapons in houses, in mosques, in hospitals in the hopes that civilians die and then useful people like you come and post these comments.
You are not mentioning why Hamas starts the cycle time and time again: a young population (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Gaza_Stri...), continuously harassed by Israeli actions that Israel deems necessary for the security of its population. Those rockets are lethal, but also just signs of frustration. To me, this conflict looks like a twelve year old having an argument with a four year old. The twelve year old can harass the four year old with words until the four year old starts kicking/screaming/biting. When you force them apart, both will claim the other started it, and both will, in a sense, be right.
This area of the world has found a local optimum that isn't very optimal and that nobody wants, but that nobody sees a way out of, either.
This scenario, were the population in control has nearly magical technology compared to the nearly useless technology available to those under occupation, reads to me like a dystopian future that is usually written about in science fiction.
I wish the scenario playing out here was a blip in history one rather than one that festers for decade, after decade, after decade without significant positive change.
From a regional warfare perspective the relative success of Iron Dome mitigates the use of stand off offensive technologies. This forces the combatants to develop alternative delivery strategies. When there is a lack of control on the ground, IEDs and operator delivered munitions seem to be the next step, but that works poorly when there is a functioning police/local military presence.
Given the constraints, I suspect the next standoff weaponry will become drone based. Something flying fast enough and high enough to be immune to small arms fire, but low enough to keep out of the kill zone of anti-air and anti-missile defense.
The only part which sounds odd is the "human factor" claim near the end. AFAIK the system is fully autonomous once deployed and does not require a human to decide whether or not to launch an interceptor missile.
the oppressed people on the other side now engage in a financial war. for the price they would build one rocket with explosive payload, now they can build some 4 dummy ones. making the invading state pay 20k x3 more than before.
while also recruiting more people, who would be averse to the violence before.
Not really. These are improvised rockets made of steel pipes and welded sheet metal fins. The propellant is fertilizer (smuggled from Egypt, usually), and sugar.
Israel has absolutely no interest in crushing Hamas. Even before Iron Dome Hamas never posed a real threat to Israel. Hamas is in fact way more valuable to Zionists than Iron Dome.
It would be a catastrophe for Netanyahu and company if all Palestinians would suddenly stop fighting because then all attention would focus on Israel's settlement policy and its unwillingness to give the Palestinians anything deserving the name "state".
No, the Zionists do not want to crush Hamas. They tellingly call campaigns like the current one "mowing the grass". Thing is, mowing the grass is not an attempt to destroy it, the point is to preserve it in a manageable state. And that is exactly what Israel is doing with Hamas.
Considering that Israel pulled its citizens and troops out of Gaza in 2005 in the hopes of peace, I'd say not only is this an insane conspiracy theory but also just obviously dumb.
It may be false, but I don't see why would it be "obviously dumb". 2005 was nine years and a few governments ago; enough time for policies to change. After all, just eight years before that, the current PM, who was also the PM back then, presented a plan that included annexation of most settlements.
I'm not saying the theory is correct, again, I have no idea, but that argument seems weak.
Given that in times of war, truth is the first victim, the likelihood that black flag operatives are planted throughout the Gaza region is pretty high. There haven't been rational investigations into the Israeli claims that these rockets are fired by Hamas - the bullhorn is loud enough that people cannot believe anything else, because they don't hear it.
But Israel, of all states, is more than capable of pulling off these kinds of activities, and its been in the dirty-tricks playbook for decades (along with those of most modern governments with an Intelligence budget, to be fair).
Until we, the people - the true masses - demand a truthful process in place of propaganda and deceit, we will never know the real truth. The likelihood that these events are orchestrated by those who truly stand to profit from both sides is pretty high. There may well be a hidden third party between Palestine and Israel, intent on continuing to profit from the conflict, and those people - well funded, I might add - are very far from the visible center stage, nay the prison dock, where they belong.
That is silly, if someone is "averse to the violence" they aren't going to be recruited by an argument that essentially boils down to "No.. don't worry about it.. now only 10% of our missiles make it through.."
Building defense at the cost of numerous innocent lives out there in Palestine. Collateral Damage is a means to achieve this. What i find more interesting is that Israel is using Hamas as a cover to clean-up the complete Palestine state. It would have been justified if the casualties were adults, real Hamas members and not kids, women.
If a smaller kid is throwing punches at you but you are able to avoid being hit by holding him at arms length, is it acceptable to throw punches with the other arm?
If a smaller adult is swinging a knife at you, and you're able to mostly avoid being hit by the knife by holding him at arms length, is it acceptable to respond with force to disarm the knife-wielding lunatic?
You're conveniently ignoring motives here. If the lunatic adult is wielding a knife because (he claims that) you took his house and land and started living in it and don't want to leave, then do you still think it's acceptable to hit him? It seems to me that you're oversimplifying the situation. Nothing is black and white, and certainly not the Israel-Palestina conflict.
Well, if he keeps at it for 8 years, and occasionally manages to throw rocks at your brothers and injure them as well, then .. yes, I think that kid has those punches coming.
Kid doesn't seem to have any parents to educate/restrain him, and the police is not interested. Not many other choices.
You gotta admire the utter delusion of people using the "give it back" argument. Islam is a religion that spread through military conquest and massacres. There is no such thing as a square meter on this planet where islam spread peacefully.
So can we please give back all the land ? Of course, there would be nowhere for muslims to live at all, least of all Palestina. It was not arab land, it was not muslim land. Nor was Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. Can we give back the land, kick out everybody who currently lives there.
The truth is as sad as it is obvious : nobody is clamoring for the land to be given back because ... they're all dead. Egypt was mined for "black gold" (slaves for muslims). Anything south of the delta was black in ancient times. Carthago (Tunisia) was filled with black people. Mined to death. Palestine, in ancient times, was filled with Jews (as everybody knows I guess), and so was Saudi Arabia. Before that ... we don't really have any data, but given the location of the region, I would imagine it changed hands many times. Iraq was a nation of Indians, not arabs.
I find it hard to believe people using arguments like that can be reasoned with at all. The utter absurdity of it.
As an Israeli citizen whose home is in the range of the Hamas rockets, it's hugely comforting to know that this technology has been deployed. I'll be teaching a Python class in Tel Aviv tomorrow, and while I can basically expect that Hamas will be sending a bunch of rockets aiming to kill me (or anyone else they can), I'm happy to know that our interruptions will likely be annoying and frustrating, rather than lethal.
As an Israeli citizen who doesn't want to see our foot soldiers in Gaza (for a very large number of reasons), I'm also happy that Iron Dome gives our government time before sending them in.
The situation with Gaza, and with the Palestinians, is a pretty bad one, although I remain optimistic over the long term. For now, though, anything that reduces the threat of rockets that Hamas is sending at us strikes me as a good thing.